E-40, "The Weedman"

Wow! I’ve only been listening to it for half a day now, and I’ve known plenty of people with a much better ear for discerning such things than I have, but E-40’s new song “The Weedman” sounds to me like it ought to be a giant smash hit. I think it’s totally excellent! It is very much like Jim Jones’ 2007 hit “We Fly High,” which is really okay, because “We Fly High” is a really great song. You might know it as “Ballin’,” because that’s what Jim Jones says on the chorus, and in a very memorable way. You still hear “We Fly High” a lot coming out of cars on the street. It was such a big hit when it came out that all the sports teams were doing it on the sidelines at the of the end of their games and stuff. It is mostly great because of its huge thwomping beat and a keyboard riff, seven notes of very simple, very very catchy melody, repeated over and over again throughout the whole song. They are such a great beat and melody, though, that you don’t mind hearing them repeated over and over again throughout the whole song. They are such a great beat and melody, in fact, that a special remix version of the song Jones did to celebrate the success of the New York Giants football team, with new lyrics all about football and the Giants, rather than about being super cool and drinking and doing drugs and having sex with women, is still pretty much as great as the original song.

And “The Weedman” is very much like that, a great big thwomping beat, a keyboard melody, only four notes this time, and a memorably enunciated chorus. But also, E-40 can rhyme really well. In this case, he does so about the marijuana industry in hometown, Vallejo, California. The video depicts same-with nice footage of pine trees on suburban streets and the display and usage of all sorts of pot paraphernalia. It also has a cool, visual effect, making the images ripple that throbs in sync with the downbeat. Because the downbeat is so big, so huge, so monstrously thwomping, it shakes the very earth the cameraman is standing on!